


that one minute with me (when did you go)

by plinys



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 02:10:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21153857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: “I need you to wake up."There’s no reply. Just the steady beat of a heart monitor.[or: Richie in the hospital, after they save Eddie.]





	that one minute with me (when did you go)

**Author's Note:**

> this is a scene i cut from a different fic that got too long and didnt fit right so i turned it into a bad things happen bingo one shot instead, for the prompt "bedside vigil"

It’s the middle of the night when he wakes up.

The same place he’s been waking up for the past few weeks. 

Sure, sometimes Richie will manage to make it back to his hotel room. Convince himself that staying here and waiting for something that might never happen isn’t worth another restless night. It’s rare that he leaves. Usually because a friend has dragged him out of there, tried to put him back to himself.

But his friends had left.

Richie had gotten good at pretending that everything was fine. 

Long enough for Bill to stop ignoring his agent’s calls (though Richie still pointedly avoids his own) and fly back home to LA. 

Long enough to convince Ben and Bev that he wouldn’t do anything drastic (he still might) and that they should enjoy their chance at happily ever after.

Long enough to get Mike packed up in his truck (because one of them deserved to leave the hell hole that was Maine) with a promise to treasure each postcard Mike sends on his travels. 

Long enough to almost forget why he was still here, trapped no more than an hour outside of his own personal hell, unable to move on. 

But here, in the middle of the night, with nothing but the beeping of a heart monitor to keep him company, it’s impossible to forget. 

_ Eddie _ .

There had been a time where Richie had forgotten him, but the ache, the missing space in his heart had always been there.

It was only seeing Eddie that had brought it all back so clearly. 

Seeing Eddie.

Nearly losing Eddie.

And now waiting for Eddie. 

“I need you to wake up,” Richie says, quiet and desperate, the way one can only be in the middle of the night when there is no one else around to hear. 

There’s no reply. 

He didn’t expect one.

There hasn’t been a reply for days… weeks... 

The doctors said that he would be lucky if there ever was one but fuck… Couldn’t he believe in miracles, just for a moment? Couldn’t it have been enough that they saved Eddie? That they brought him up out of the sewers, rushed him to the hospital with some thin excuse of a car accident, everyone covered in sewage and blood and hoping the doctor’s just wouldn’t fucking ask. 

They didn’t.

Of course they didn’t. 

Because this is  _ Maine _ , and weird shit always seems to happen in New England.

And doctors always willing to just look the other way. 

Just like they were looking away now, a blessing and a curse, ignoring the fact that once again Richie was staying well beyond visiting hours to sit by the bedside of a man that wouldn’t wake up. 

That probably never will. 

Richie sighs. 

Stretches a little. 

Leans closer. 

Eddie’s hands are cold when he takes then. Cold, but not lifeless. Richie remembers all too clearly a moment he thought they might have been. A battle going on around them but Richie had only cared about Eddie. About the pressure they were putting on his wound. Worrying at how Eddie’s hands began to weaken against his, no longer steady and sure, no longer desperate to stay alive. 

They said that it was a miracle that he survived. 

But what he really needs is - “Come on, Eds,” Richie whispers. A secret shared between the two of them. “One last miracle for me.” 

Nothing.

Just the steady beat of a heart monitor. 

He tells himself that when Eddie wakes up ( _ when _ , not  _ if  _ because Richie can’t deal in  _ ifs _ ), he will probably make a joke about this someday. Stand up on a stage in front of strangers and comment on the poor state of hospital coffee or the nurses kept asking if he was  _ married _ . 

He’ll start writing his own jokes again. Because if Eddie had been able to tell that they were scripted, that it wasn’t really him then, maybe it was time for a change. If only because he knows the man that he is watching sleep would want that for Richie. 

That is assuming he even has a career after this. He ignored his tour dates in Reno, and Vegas, and the rest of the fucking world. His career is probably going down the drain with all of this but it’s…. It’s worth it.

As long as Eddie wakes up it will all be worth it. 

“Just wake the fuck up, Eddie.” 

Going back to sleep after this is a lost cause. 

So he talks to fill the silence.

He’s been doing a lot of that lately.

Some say that people in comas can hear the world outside of them. He imagines if that were true that Eddie would have woken up by now, just to tell him to shut the fuck up. 

What Richie wouldn’t give for that to happen. 

“You would hate it here. Insist that staying in the hospital for so long just means you’ll catch something else. You’d probably be convinced that your nurses are poisoning you,” Richie talks. Just to fill the otherwise quiet space. “They’re not by the way. They bring me coffee sometimes, and look at me with what is clearly pity and, fuck, Eddie look what you’ve done to me.” 

It had all came back to him at the Jade. 

The second he saw Eddie.

It’s the same thing he feels when he looks at him now, lying there, pale and asleep, in a hospital bed. 

It’s the same thing he’s felt since he was ten years old. 

_ Love _ .

It’s always been love. 

He just hadn’t known how to say the words before. 

“I need you to wake up,” Richie says. “So I can tell you, all the things I never was brave enough to say before.” 

_ So I can tell you that I love you _ .

**Author's Note:**

> come be my friend on twitter: [ @plinys ](https://twitter.com/plinys)


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